


Just Lucid 3

by LanceTheFuckerTucker



Series: Just Lucid [3]
Category: Bucky Barnes - Fandom
Genre: F/M, kinda angsty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-22
Updated: 2017-01-22
Packaged: 2018-09-19 05:31:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9420773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LanceTheFuckerTucker/pseuds/LanceTheFuckerTucker
Summary: When Bucky finally finds you, he realises your existence isn't so different from his.





	

Bucky nervously thumbed through the New York Times to find your message, buried in the headlines. He had barely touched his breakfast and his once boiling cup of coffee had gone cold. All roads pointed towards a trap, he knew this all too well, but he desperately wanted to find you.

Back in the Hydra days, if an operative lost their way on a mission, it was standard practice for handlers and doctors to hide messages in the newspapers that circulated the city the operative was in. It would direct the operative to their nearest base. But this time, you were directing Bucky to you.

Deduced from the first six headlines in the paper he came up with the address: ‘29A Junius Street’.

That was it. Bucky knew where you had been hiding out. You had been just a street away all this time.

Leaving his eggs and coffee untouched, he rose to his feet and headed for the door.

Nearing the darkened road, his steps fell quick upon the pavement to the time of the skittish beating in his chest. His gait, uneven and heavy. The street was deserted and even as the sun began to rise over the apartment block, the road was still shrouded in grey and navy from the industrial yards all around. If this really was a setup, Hydra couldn’t have picked a better spot.

He ran his hand over the pistol he kept in the inside pocket of his jacket. Just in case.

Meanwhile, you sat at your table, in your poky apartment, nursing the steaming hot coffee in your trembling hands. You were still in your nightdress, your hair in rollers, carrying dark purple bags under your eyes. You hadn’t slept. And it wasn’t a rare occurrence.

You had set up a nice little life for yourself since you returned from Europe. You were a new person. You changed everything about yourself, from your name, right down to the way you wore your hair. You worked as a psychiatrist, taking on clients on a freelance basis. It was surprisingly easy to forge a much more positive past to hide the terror you had endured. There was no way - at least you hoped - that the last traces of Hydra could find you now. You were moving on, but still consistently haunted.

You were pensive. Perfectly still. Perfectly quiet. Draining the rich, dark liquid from your favourite cup.

Then the door rattled. It tore you away from your thoughts. You were alert.

You quietly padded on bare feet towards the door, stopping at the table next to it. Calmly, you picked up your gun. Then you peered through the peephole on the very tips of your toes.

The broad, hooded figure paced anxiously to and fro. You couldn’t see his face.

Anticipating what was ahead, you cocked the gun and undid the row of deadbolts on your door, then the chain, and then the lock. Taking a few strides backwards, you were in position, the gun locked in your grasp. “Door’s open!” you called.

The door edged open slightly, then a familiar set of eyes crept out from behind it.

It was Barnes.

He raised his hands as he entered the room, your gun still trained on him in shaking hands. He spoke slowly, wracked with his own nerves: “Doc? It’s Bucky. James. The Asset. You wrote me. I came to find you. I need to know that this isn’t a trap.”

His voice was clearer than you ever remembered. His hair was short, he had shaved, put on weight. This was the first time you had ever seen him in clothes that weren’t stained in blood or soaked with rain. At last he was completely aware. A whole person. And it made you hurt in unspeakable ways. But, in equal measure, you felt a warm surge of pride well up inside you, cutting through the guilt and the shame you felt. The tears began to form at the corners of your eyes as you lowered your gun and placed it on the table. He lowered his hands.

Bucky studied every detail of you as the tears began to track down your cheeks. “James? Is it really you?” you asked.

He clenched his jaw and nodded.

Three small, feeble, steps were all it took until you were face to face with Bucky, staring up at him, open mouthed. “Do you remember me?” you began in a small voice, running your fingers over his cheek, “Do you remember-“. He cut you off before you could mention you last meeting.

“I remember all of it and I’m so sorry,” he croaked, the gravity of the situation catching up on him too. “You could never have stopped me, thrown me off of you.”

“James, you would never have gotten to that point if I - Hydra - hadn’t made you that way. I let it happen because they starved me of that too,” you sobbed, “I should have protected you. It wasn’t you.”

“I still blame myself,” he sighed, “I could see it all, I felt everything. Did they ever find out?”

“I killed them before they even had the chance to, I couldn’t let them know that I was the one who compromised you. I abused their trust. I abused my power over you. I’m a monster,” you admitted, hoping he would concede.

You could feel the tension in his voice: “I chose to walk away. You had to live with what I did to you. I’m the monster here. Not you.”

Neither of you had quite realised how physically close you were as your reunion played out, until you took a step back, Bucky’s hands falling from your waist.

Bucky trained his gaze on the floor as he let go of you.

“We’ve both done terrible things,” you said, your voice hoarse but timid.

Your words seemed to fall on deaf ears as Bucky cast an eye around the living area of your apartment. It wasn’t much bigger than his. The curtains were drawn, a couple of dishes lay in the sink. There wasn’t much to be deduced from the possessions you held in your boxy little abode. Because there weren’t any. Not a plant nor a poster; no records, no colour. It was anonymous and that was just the way you needed it to be. But the thing that struck him the most was the fear that had obviously been instilled in its inhabitant. Everything was strategically placed to be used as a weapon. And Bucky was an expert in living like this.

Your existence now was based on suppression and self-preservation. Unlike you, his was based on redemption and recovery. That was what he had already gathered.

And then the words hit him, just like old times: “Sit down, James. I just made coffee.”

As you puttered around your kitchen, wiping away your tears, he duly complied.

At last, you were eye to eye across the table, both of you cradling cups of coffee in shaking hands, both weighed down with guilt and shame and questions so numerous it’d take a lifetime for you both to work through them. At least you had regained your composure.

But neither of you were in any rush. Instead, you both drained your cups, two pairs of blue eyes meeting on occasion. You reached the bottom of your’s first, taking it as a token to begin speaking to the man you had wronged in unspeakable ways. Your words were few and as emotionless as you could manage: “I suppose you have questions, James?”

You eyed him carefully. He sighed. Again, his eyes were drawn to yours.

“I don’t know where to begin,” he said quietly.

“You could have easily have come back to kill me,” you suggested, not wanting to pose the question in your mind too explicitly.

His eyes widened. “I didn’t want to kill you.”

Truthfully, you wouldn’t have blamed him. In your mind, you were a monster.

He began again: “You were one of the things that made it all easier. Even when I was in that state, I never got the impression you were here by choice.”

He paused. “Why didn’t you try to find me when you found out I had gotten away? I could have protected you for a change.”

He almost laughed at the absurdity of what had just fallen from his mouth.

“I don’t think you were a man who wanted to be found,” you chuckled, withholding your real reason for finding him again.

“I was more loyal to you than I was Hydra,” Bucky stated like it was a cold, hard fact.

“Why now though? I’m just starting to get my life back on track. Do you have any idea how much of a kick in the teeth it is to have to go back to looking over your shoulder when your past comes back to haunt you?” he pressed.

You did. You did know what that was like. You spent the last three years living that way. But you couldn’t just stick to the facts. That would come later. 

“I knew you were from Brooklyn too. And I had just come home too. I thought about you a lot,” you admitted, “it’s been lonely.”

You weren’t lying. You just weren’t being entirely honest.

Bucky’s features softened. “Are you still in their pocket?”

You were thrown back in your chair by this, raising your hands. After they had killed your family. After the years they imprisoned you, forcing you to tend to their operatives, it was unthinkable. On the contrary, it had been your greatest achievement to see off as many of Hydra’s henchmen as you could since Bucky disappeared.

“No. No way,” you insisted.

He sensed your unease. He believed you.

“You know they’re still out there?” he mused, casually.

You nodded. You knew. You had been watched for weeks.

“You need to be careful.”

You nodded again. You knew how to protect yourself from what was coming.

Changing the subject, you asked: “How much of the conditioning did you manage to get undone?”

Bucky’s eyes darted from various points in the room. Then he spoke: “It’s the memories I’m still fuzzy about. But I don’t think I’m susceptible anymore. Short of putting me in the chair again, you know?”

You knew he was wrong, there were deeper layers to his programming that not even the great Doctor Stephen Strange could undo. Vicious depths. You prayed those would remain dormant. You said nothing.

You listened to him nevertheless, as he spoke about his battle to regain his memories and everything he had been through from hiding out in Bucharest, the fallout from killing the Starks in the 90’s and Zemo’s plot. You completely zoned out at Bucky’s words as he spoke about what happened; like he had just hit the nail on the head and hammered home his reason - unbeknownst to him yet- for being here. You became suspended in gratitude that through Zemo’s plot, a number of sleepers hidden in Siberia had been killed.

You didn’t want to tell him, not right now. But surely he must have known. He trained them after all.

There was one out there. Closer than Bucky realised. You were biding your time to ask him for help.


End file.
